1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to detection, location, mapping and displaying of objects in space.
2. Background of the Invention
Small and/or light-weight unmanned ground, aerial or marine vehicles, while moving in different kinds of areas, may be required to avoid obstacles. To avoid obstacles these vehicles need objects detection and location system. The higher the velocity of the vehicle, the shorter the time the operator or the vehicle controller have to avoid the obstacle. Therefore, in order allow the vehicle to avoid the obstacles, it is critical to detect the obstacles and to measure the range and the direction to the obstacles in a very short time. While it is quite feasible to adapt known object detection and mapping solutions to heavy vehicles, it is difficult to adapt known solutions to low-weight or miniature vehicles. To provide low-weight and miniature unmanned vehicles with object detection and mapping capabilities, there is thus a need for a low-cost, low-weight, fast-response approach to detecting and locating objects in space.
US 2006/0131486 discloses a flash ladar system where a laser directs a laser fan beam pulse to a scanning element that in turn directs the laser fan beam to a vertical region of space. Light reflected from an object in the vertical region of space is directed by a reflecting element to a sensor provided with a column of photosensitive pixels that connects to a charge storage matrix of non-photosensitive pixels. After an integration period electrical charges are shifted from the photosensitive region to an adjacent column in the charge storage region. This process is repeated for multiple integration periods until the charge storage region is filled with charges whereupon a serial shift register removes the information to be processed by a data processor.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,808,728 discloses a vehicle periphery monitoring system having a monitoring unit to monitor a periphery of a vehicle, based on output of a distance operation part and a scanning direction detector.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,916,536 discloses a range finder for wide angle video rate imaging that uses a radiation modulation for range determination to maintain accuracy at short ranges.
US 2003/123045 discloses an optoelectronic echo-based method for mapping out an object space in which beams of narrow and wide divergence are used for measurement and additionally for reliable, overlapping detection of reference markers.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,627,734 discloses a 3-dimensional imaging method for surface examination being independent of article movement to achieve full scanning using active triangulation.